The Callais decision is predicated on the idea that American leaders will act justly on their own. That premise has already been proven hollow
A federal appeals court gave the Trump administration the green light to resume its fast-track removal of illegal aliens throughout the United States on Tuesday. In a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an August 2025 decision by Biden-appointed D.C. District Judge Jia Cobb. That ruling attempted to […]
It’s one of the Supreme Court’s most palpable fears: Somewhere, somehow, a government official might one day be held personally accountable in some way for their official conduct—or, more accurately, their misconduct. A new case at the court will likely be the latest demonstration of the court’s pro-impunity mindset.The justices agreed on Monday to hear Nielsen v. Watanabe in the upcoming term, which starts next October. The case will give the court an opportunity to further narrow what are known as Bivens claims, which allow for people to sue federal officials for damages under increasingly narrow circumstances.The plaintiff in the case, Ketei Watanabe, was a prisoner at a federal prison in Honolulu in 2021. During that time, he was “brutally assaulted” in a “gang-related fight,” according to his brief for the justices. After the fight, he told multiple prison officials, including nurse Francis Nielsen, that he had suffered significant injuries and was in a great deal of pain.Nielsen and other officials declined to obtain specialist treatment for Watanabe or to transport him to a local hospital for treatment. Instead, his filings said, Nielsen gave him over-the-counter pain medication. “Several months after the attack, Watanabe finally received an x-ray: It showed that he had a fractured coccyx and that bone chips had migrated to surrounding soft tissue areas,” his brief explained to the court. Even after this diagnosis, Watanabe alleged, Nielsen and other officials refused to provide him with outside medical treatment and he did not obtain proper medical care until his release from prison three years after the initial fight. The Supreme Court has previously held that prisons have a duty to provide medical care for prisoners under the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, Watanabe sued the officials in federal court for their alleged mistreatment.What happens when a government official violates your constitutional rights in some way? If they are a state or local official, like a police officer in a major city, you might file a Section 1983 lawsuit in federal court for damages. That Reconstruction-era law allows people to sue state and local officials in federal court in their personal capacity for violating a federal constitutional right. (More on this later.)If a federal official violates your constitutional rights, on the other hand, there are very few ways to hold that official personally accountable. Congress has not enacted a Section 1983–style law for suing federal officials, though there have occasionally been proposals to do so. Nor do other congressionally enacted remedies, like the Federal Tort Claims Act, allow people to pursue damages against specific officials who violate their constitutional rights.Watanabe instead relied upon an implied cause of action rather than an explicitly created one. This approach became more common after the 1971 case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Most people just call the case Bivens for short. In Bivens, federal agents searched the home of a New York man without a warrant and arrested him on drug-related charges. Bivens sued the agents in question in federal court for violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unconstitutional searches and seizures.The narcotics agents argued that they could not be sued in their personal capacity because Congress had not created a cause of action to do so. The Supreme Court, led by Justice William Brennan, sided with Bivens. While Brennan acknowledged that the Fourth Amendment “does not in so many words provide for its enforcement by an award of money damages for the consequences of its violation,” he concluded that Bivens could rely upon an implied cause of action instead to vindicate his violated rights.Between 1971 and 1980, the Supreme Court applied that reasoning to two other contexts: gender-discrimination lawsuits by congressional staff under the Fifth Amendment and, as relevant for Watanabe’s case, prisoner lawsuits over improper medical care by prison officials under the Eighth Amendment. The latter is grounded in the 1980 case Carlson v. Green. In Carlson, prison officials effectively killed an asthmatic prisoner by holding him in conditions over doctors’ protests, denying him treatment for an asthma attack for roughly eight hours, and then giving him substandard care until he died.Since Carlson, the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative majority has gone out of its way to clip the wings of Bivens claims. Justices ranging from Warren Burger to Neil Gorsuch have argued that, under the Constitution’s separation of powers, it is Congress’s responsibility to create causes of actions to vindicate constitutional rights, not the judiciary’s. To that end, they have effectively refused to extend Bivens to new contexts, while also—for reasons known only to the justices—declining to overturn Bivens altogether.In the 2017 case Ziglar v.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday that border officials do not need “clear and convincing evidence” that a lawful permanent resident committed a disqualifying crime before treating that person as an applicant for admission rather than someone already admitted to the United States. The decision was split along ideological lines.'Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude.'The case involved Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese national and green card holder who was charged in 2012 with selling counterfeit clothing. After briefly traveling to China while the charge was pending, Lau was paroled into the U.S. rather than admitted when he returned. He later pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting.During oral arguments in April, the government argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require immigration officers at the border to possess clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident committed a crime involving moral turpitude — an act driven by dishonesty or immorality. Instead, government attorney Sopan Joshi argued that any burden is satisfied later during the individual's removal hearings.Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed. The court held that the INA allows the government to regard a lawful permanent resident as seeking admission if he has committed a qualifying offense and that nothing in the statute imposes a requirement of clear and convincing evidence on border officers making "quick judgments on the spot."“Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” Thomas wrote.The ruling reverses the Second Circuit's decision, which had sided with Lau and held that immigration officials needed clear and convincing evidence that he had actually committed the crime before treating him as an applicant for entry rather than a person already admitted.RELATED: ‘Shall not be infringed’ — even if you're high, Supreme Court rules Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesJustice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, arguing that the government must determine whether an exception applies under the INA before stripping a green card holder of admitted status. She warned that the majority's approach gives the government broad authority to parole lawful permanent residents and justify the decision later.“But today the Court allows the Government to deem an LPR to be ‘seeking an admission’ first and justify the applicability of an exception later — undermining the statutory scheme as well as the benefits and security that come with having a green card,” Jackson asserted.The court did not decide whether Lau's trademark counterfeiting conviction qualifies as a crime involving moral turpitude, sending the case back to the Second Circuit for further proceedings.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
The Supreme Court rejected a former Louisiana inmate's effort to sue state prison officials after they shaved his dreadlocks in violation of his religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court sided with Exxon Mobil in its efforts to sue a Cuban conglomerate for operating oil and gas assets seized in 1960 following the country’s Communist Revolution.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Tuesday that practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement cannot sue tech giant Cisco over allegations of aiding the Chinese government’s surveillance and torture of the group. The conservative majority rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to bring claims against the company and two of its then-executives under the 18th century Alien Tort Statute…
The former Louisiana inmate argued his Rastafarian faith was violated after prison officials focibly shaved off his hair.
Suit alleged California-based company developed technology that allowed China to surveil members of movementThe US supreme court further limited the reach of a federal law used to hold corporations liable for human rights abuses committed abroad, as it issued a ruling on Tuesday ending a lawsuit by members of the Falun Gong movement accusing Cisco Systems of facilitating religious persecution in China.The justices reversed a lower court’s decision that had breathed new life into the 2011 lawsuit, which was brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. The suit had alleged that Cisco knowingly developed technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members. Continue reading...